Metagame Gen V Balanced Hackmons

Trust me, Trick Room in BH is really restricting your options unless you go ahead and use base 90s. You're basically limited to Escavalier and Shuckle for common BH Pokemon, and good slowmons outside of them are things like Snorlax.

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because everything runs max speed in bh, you can actually run even base 100s in tr, and youll stilll underspeed the majority of mons. i think trick room is actually a very interesting strategy and intend to build a tr team to try out when i have some time

Simple Stored Power Jirachi is really good. I use Jirachi for bulk and immunity to toxic. I also have Skill Swap for Shedinja and Contrary sweepers, and Toxic also works for Shedinja and Unaware things.

i feel like skill swap isnt particularly useful, as you can already beat shedinja with toxic (although i'd suggest switching to poison gas so that if it runs magic coat, you can win the ppstall). In place of skill swap, i'd suggest running magic coat, which makes you much less vulnerable to prankster spore etc, as well as supporting your team nicely in a lot of other cases.

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It's an awesome strategy on Gengar - moreso than Giratina, really. Giratina can tank pretty much anything that isn't Outrage or Draco Meteor, so it has several opportunities to set up. Gengar, however, is frail as hell and is entirely dependent on scaring something out to set up. Skill Swap + Normalize not only screws over whatever switches in, but can also be used to mess up Shedinja.

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT THING

Sturdninja is now nerfed (edit: fixed): instead of not taking damage from attacks, it now takes 0 damage from attacks (i.e. it can be affected by secondary effects, such as Inferno's and Sacred Fire's burn)

Still has to go through the Lum Berry, but yeah.
I have to wonder how this will affect the meta. Sheddy is less common than before because of all the team support it requires, but every team carries a counter too it because it can easily win games otherwise. Personally, I've rarely seen the moves that could KO Shedinja with their secondary, but maybe No Guard and Serene Grace will become more common since they can KO Shedinja and give you additional power / mad haxing skills.

in general i'd want to use a bulky mon that can take advantage of spreading status with no guard moves, such as arceus, which can both successfully use both physical and special moves, and can take enough hits for it to be useful

I have to wonder how this will affect the meta. Sheddy is less common than before because of all the team support it requires, but every team carries a counter too it because it can easily win games otherwise. Personally, I've rarely seen the moves that could KO Shedinja with their secondary, but maybe No Guard and Serene Grace will become more common since they can KO Shedinja and give you additional power / mad haxing skills.

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Sheddinja is a terrible Pokemon for the tier, in my experience. Every game I play is won with hazards - they barely ever leave the field when you predict and spinblock correctly. Then again, I've faced some pretty nasty anti spin-blockers. I won't reveal the sets though, because I want to use them myself.

Zapdos seems like a good No Guard candidate as well. Not quite as bulky, but STAB on Zap Cannon packs a punch. Between Inferno, Focus Blast, and Blizzard, you'll be hitting most Electric resists super effectively.

Similar to Skill Swap Regirock, except you essentially have two abilities if the opponent stays in against you since No Guard affects the entire field in Singles. Magic Guard and Taunt are pretty standard and useful, and Magma Storm not only roasts Flash Fire Steels (besides Escavalier...) but also allows another Pokemon to come in safely.

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Since No Guard means in singles that attacks can't miss, Skill Swapping it with a move with questionable accuracy (we're talking 70 here so it works if the opponent switches out) is pretty nice.

Another note to people:
Instead of using prankster groudon, try out rhydon over it.
Rhydon has a good bit more bulk, which lets it beat a lot of things after stealing their boosts, and its rock typing allows it to beat counter belly drum slaking/regigigas which groudon cant do.

Which can start firing off 260 base power stored power shots at +3 SpA form behind subs and pass off to a bouncer if it suspects whirlwind / heartswap.

There are several other powerful set-up sweepers with similarly narrow counters, so the metagame requires a large and versatile team to survive.

This leads to an increased emphasis on breaking small holes in teams. With a two pokemon defeated there is a good chance that a team now lacks a counter to one or more sweeping potentials or lacks the potential to sweep in return.

Perhaps due to a decrease in the use of magic bounce in the metagame (I'm not sure why, perhaps a surge in mold breaker deoxys-s) spore-phasing is a very effective technique I have noticed. After bouncers are eliminated spore-phasing also gathers massive momentum. For people who haven't been the recipients of this technique, it functions two basic principles:
1) sleeping counters reset on phasing
2) damage builds up over dragon tail/ entry hazards

Whirlwind circumvents substitute while dragontail avoids magic bounce, making the moves complimentary rather than reduntant. It should be noted that spamming dragontail on a mostly sleeping team makes it impossible to switch in a counter intentionally, reducing the chance of getting a counter out before losing a pokemon to as low as 1 - (4/5)^(#turns it takes to defeat one pokemon). These odds can be particularly severe because of how common dragon types are as well as the massive damage stealth rocks do to some pokemon.

Since building any momentum is a massive boon in the metagame, being able to sleep a few pokemon and scramble the opposing team can be enough to make that first break.

They all achieve similar effects in different ways such that counters to Giratina don't necessarily counter deoxys or lugia. I wouldn't suggest running all three on the same team, but having counters to all of them is extremely important.

Of interest here is that magic coat using sturdinja will eventually phase into hazards as it is now phased by dragon-tail. Whirlwind is favored over dragontail on deoxys because it's low attack makes it hard to break substitutes and win attrition damage, but mold breaker and the high pp of whirlwind allow it to set up a powerful midgame dominance by breaking magic bounce.

There are also bulk rock types who can probably execute this method effectively under sandstorm for additional passive damage, but I haven't used or seen them yet.

Prankster spore is a great tactic, you just have to prepare to be accused of having "no skill" by people who are unaware of Magic Coat/Bounce.

On a slight change of subject, has anyone else noticed that when you use Skill Swap your 'new' ability doesn't show up when you hover over your pokemon anymore? I run a lead Skill Swap Regirock and after using Skill Swap it still displays my old ability...?

If you have a not-so-obvious Prankster user you can Taunt the Kyurem-B (I'm not sure if Assist can select Magic Coat or not). A really sturdy physical wall with recovery will usually come out on top against Outrage spam teams. Getting rid of Blissey won't help though, as Assist can select moves from a fainted Pokemon.